"The outburst of emotion made me a very perceptive child."

Bestselling book on child education, “The Son’s Brain,” by Professor Kwak Yun-jeong
Parenting Principles That Don't Let Your Mood Be Your Attitude

★★★★★ Bestseller 『The Son's Brain』, Professor Kwak Yun-jeong's latest book
★★★★★ Recommended books by Seoul National University Professor Moon Yong-rin
★★★★★ Parenting Q&A for Parents by Growth Stage
★★★★★ Includes the latest research from Harvard and Stanford

Young children do not have a developed ability to understand their own state, mood, or emotions.
The abilities we need to live, such as cognition, emotion, and language, are not formed at birth, but sprout, grow, and bear fruit through parental upbringing.
Therefore, the principles and values ​​that parents used to raise their children become the standards that determine the child's cognition and emotions.

Professor Kwak Yoon-jeong, author of "The Son's Brain," a long-time bestseller in the field of child education, and one of the best parenting mentors in Korea who helps parents solve their concerns through various broadcasts and lectures, including the EBS documentary prime "Children's Emotional Intelligence," discovered that most of the reasons parents have difficulty raising children are due to "emotions."
The cause of conflict between parents and children is that the love for the child is not properly conveyed because it is buried in the parents' momentary emotions.
Professor Kwak believed that if we could systematically understand children's development through brain science and establish appropriate parenting standards and principles, then the love and care for children would not be left behind as self-reproach and regret for mothers.
And, he has completed a book titled “I Will Not Raise a Child According to My Feelings” by easily explaining the brain science theories that can help parents manage their emotions up to the age of 6, which is a critical period for brain development.

This book is based on brain science research and contains information on how parents can understand their children and what kind of parenting and education their children want and need.
Rather than parenting inconsistently and repeatedly based on momentary moods, we build a solid foundation for children to lead healthy and happy lives by learning what their brains like and desire based on scientifically proven brain development.
It also provides detailed explanations of children's characteristics, physiological responses, and levels of thinking and judgment according to the stage of brain development, and provides warm advice on parenting and learning methods that parents are curious about.
There are no parents who do not love their children.
To love someone is to accurately understand and accept their desires and actions.
Professor Kwak Yun-jeong's solid and wise advice will serve as a great foundation for truly loving and respecting your child.

When raising children, you often worry about whether your child is behind in development compared to other children or whether there is a problem.
So, contrary to the love you feel for your child, you may become angry or anxious and not know what to do.
This feeling will only grow stronger as we cannot clearly see what changes and developmental characteristics emerge as our children grow.
At times like these, learning about your child's brain development can help alleviate some of your anxiety, frustration, and curiosity.

---pp.16-17

Mothers talk to their babies while making eye contact, caressing their faces, and looking at them with loving eyes.
In this process, the mother conveys her emotions to the baby.
At this time, the baby hears and processes the nuances of emotion contained in the mother's words through the right temporal lobe, which memorizes emotional information and further causes the baby to feel positive emotions, which in turn causes the release of pleasure hormones and neurotransmitters.
Conversely, what happens when a mother and baby share negative emotions? If a mother, exhausted and irritated, loses control of her emotions and yells or lashes out in front of the baby, the baby immediately experiences stress and releases the stress hormone cortisol.
Cortisol, a stress hormone, is associated with negative moods, but it can also negatively impact memory by weakening the function of the hippocampus, the memory center.
---p.50

I'd like to introduce a very important experiment related to the development of a baby's sense of touch.
This is a monkey attachment experiment by psychologist Harry Harlow.
Through this experiment, he developed important theories about human tactile development and attachment.
I showed them a wire monkey doll with a bottle attached to it and a monkey doll made of soft fur.
Interestingly, the baby monkey, while being held by a furry monkey doll, stuck its head out and sucked from the bottle of a wire monkey doll.
Although he did suck from the wire monkey's bottle to satisfy his hunger, he was more attached to the warm, soft furry monkey.
As in this experiment, touch and physical contact are very important to animals.
It's the same for humans.
Attachment formation has a significant impact on how babies develop interpersonal relationships as they grow.
It is said that if you form a secure and affectionate attachment relationship as a child, you will form similar attachment relationships with other people, but if you form an unstable and unaffectionate relationship as a child, you may form unstable relationships as an adult.
Therefore, we must pay special attention to forming and establishing a stable attachment relationship, which is the baby's first human relationship.

---pp.111-112

Sometimes, when a baby is deprived of emotional interaction with their caregivers or parents, or more precisely, warm and healthy interaction or care, they may show facility syndrome.
The term "institutional syndrome" was coined after World War II when studying the symptoms observed in orphans who survived the war.
This is a problem that occurs in children who do not receive their mother's love or care during the first year of life, and can cause mental and health problems, functional disorders, and in severe cases, death.
According to researchers, no matter how physically comfortable a child is or how nutritious their diet is, if they don't feel emotionally connected early in life, they will have difficulty developing normally.
This is a concept that allows us to understand how important emotional connection and interaction with parents or caregivers are to a child during the first year of life.
Once brain cells are damaged or destroyed, they are difficult to recover or regenerate.
If parents' love and emotions, which act as fertilizer and water, are not provided during the critical period when the flower should bloom, the limbic system will wither.
Eventually, the baby may not be able to properly feel emotions later on, or the development of other organs related to emotions may also stop.
---p.150

Positive discipline can be seen as a parenting method that respects and cooperates with children according to their level.
When I see my toddler engaging in risky behavior, I sometimes get angry or punish them without realizing it.
Then, parents or caregivers enter a vicious cycle of self-blame and regret.
Positive discipline was proposed to break this cycle.
The principle of positive discipline is not to direct or command.
Even if they are young children, express yourself with words of encouragement rather than directives, and wait for your child to choose his or her own behavior.
For example, instead of saying, “Get dressed quickly because we have to go out!” say, “What do we need to do before we go out?” and instead of saying, “Put away the toys you played with!” ask, “Now that we’re done playing, what do we need to do?”

---pp.216-217

When we feel stressed, we usually feel negative emotions accompanying it.
When we feel anxious, angry, or afraid, we become stressed, and when we are stressed, these negative emotions arise.
Of course, if stress occurs over a short period of time, it can actually be energizing, but if it becomes chronic and long-term, it can leave you feeling helpless and frustrated.
The severity of the stress is even greater when the person experiencing it is a child.
Because infants do not have experience or know how to cope with stress.
When adults feel upset or irritated, they use their own methods to relieve it.
You can forget by meeting a friend and chatting, exercising, or having a drink.
However, young children do not know how to relieve stress on their own, so they just cry, throw tantrums, or show symptoms physically.
Ultimately, persistent stress puts the limbic system, especially the amygdala, into a state of negative emotion and damages the prefrontal cortex.
Damage to the prefrontal cortex can cause problems with understanding one's own emotions and empathizing with the emotions of others, which can even damage one's character and morality.

---pp.324-325